It started as a side project. Rob Collie built a Power BI model for his rec league hockey team. Just for fun. Just to see what the data could say. But something weird happened. The dashboards were solid. The data model was solid. But, the users still had questions. And lots of them. And that’s when it clicked: people don’t think in slicers. They think in questions. Natural ones. The kind dashboards rarely anticipate.

In this episode, Rob and Justin Mannhardt didn’t just talk about Microsoft’s Copilot for Power BI. They put it to the test. No tuning. No prep. Just a raw semantic model paired with real questions from actual humans. The result? A glimpse at what happens when the tech finally meets the moment. Copilot isn’t just a gimmick. It understands nuance, handles filters, and points people to the answer without making them dig. And it’s getting better by the day.

This isn’t a future-state conversation. You’ve already done the hard part. Now you can build on it. And if you’ve been wondering when AI will start delivering real value, this is a pretty good place to start.

Also in this episode:

Indy Inline Hockey Dashboards

Inline Analytics Doesn’t Mean What You Suspect it Means, w/Ryan Spahr

Copilot for Power BI

Rethinking the ROI of Dashboards

Karthik B. Reddy

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